‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Retro Recap – ‘Phantasms’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

For a brief moment there, it really appeared as though season seven of Star Trek: The Next Generation, was going to be mired in balance. Wherein we would enjoy a few traditional episodes before the series peppered in a random, nothing to lose, final season story. As evidenced by the fact that the early parts of this season, really did offer up a lot of traditional TNG before that wild pirate story came into play. One that wrapped up, with the old fuzzy and familiar feelings we’ve come to enjoy with this show. But as it turns out… balance is simply not going to be the case in this final season. Because just like that, the series opted to dive right back into experimental storytelling right after making us as feel as comfortable as can be.
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Because ‘Phantasms’ is a story that truly offered up one wild story. One that saw Lieutenant Commander Data dealing with a very unique crisis. In that, shortly after helping to install a brand-new warp core aboard the Enterprise, that simply never worked, he began to have terrible dreams. The kind that saw his coworkers mutilated or feasting on cranial fluid and each other for that matter as well. Not to mention there were three strangers always causing harm in his nightmares and at first… Data and his shipmates thought nothing of this. As though it was nothing more than a Soong program being a Soong program. But when Data began to dream during the day and was motivated to violently do something about the horrible things, he saw… the crew quickly took this seriously.

In fact, for a moment there, his shipmates were concerned that something terrible was happening to Data’s electronic mind. To the point where he was confined to quarters and uncertain of his future. But thankfully, it turned out he wasn’t losing his digital mind or degrading in some form or fashion. His unique way of processing information had alerted him to a real problem aboard the ship. In that, strange inter dimensional aliens had taken root amongst the crew, and they were slowly eating the crew’s cellular structure away. And the only way to save the crew… was to bring Picard and Geordi into Data’s dreams via the holodeck. Where they learned these aliens were brought here from the new core design and with a little help from Data’s ability to transmit signals, they could be defeated… and were.

All of which… made for a very different kind of episode. Because on the one hand, you have an alien of the week showcase through those parasites. Which is traditional stuff through and through. But let’s be honest… all of that is immaterial to the dreams and nightmares that Data experienced in this tale. Because some weird and eerie stuff was put on screen. Such as having Dr. Crusher drink cranial fluid from Riker’s skull and of course, there is the infamous cake scene where Data and the aliens carved up a bakery/living hybrid of Counselor Troi. Plus, those sequences were surreal and strange and eerie as well and, in many ways, this should be a failure of an episode, since it just leans so hard into horror and avant-garde elements.

But it’s not. It is actually ridiculously compelling through and through, and you simply cannot turn away from Data’s nightmares and all the weird they contain. In fact, they are… uncanny in how well they reflect actual dreams, since they reflect the detachment and randomness we experience when our brains hits REM sleep, and also… the acting here is top notch. All of which makes this, a shockingly engaging episode, one that you will definitely feel a little off coming away from, but you also kind of want to watch it again. Just to make sure you properly soaked everything up in tis this story and well… it deserves a round of applause for being supremely unconventional and for shocking us with a story that shouldn’t work but does and truly… it will be interesting to see what other unique and surprising episodes await us as we warp toward the end of this magnificent series. Until next time.

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